Nutritional formulas or compositions can be, for instance, infant formulas or also nutritional liquids for toddlers, invalids, elderly people, humans having nutritional deficiencies and/or having a deficient immune system or athletes.
In the field of nutritional compositions, single-serving solutions are known which enable to provide a predefined amount of comestible product to a consumer.
WO2009/083495 for example relates to a packaging for a consumable articles such as a comestible product or medicine, that comprises a container including an amount of the consumable article necessary for a single use, wherein the container is provided at one end thereof with an opening being surrounded by a rigid skirt adapted for being connected to a liquid container such as a bottle. Opening means of the container enable to mix the consumable article of the container with liquid provided within the bottle.
A more convenient preparation of a nutritional composition is enabled by a preparation device in which a single-serving of a preferably powdered composition being provided within a capsule or cartridge is dissolved by means of injection with filtered respectively sanitized liquid such as water. Thereby, any undesired contaminants should be removed from the liquid before the liquid is mixed with the ingredients. For this purpose, such a device preferably comprises filter means for filtering respectively sanitizing the water.
In recent development, capsules with integrated antimicrobial filter have been introduced into the market in order to ensure the provision of filtered respectively sanitized liquid to the capsule for the preparation of the nutritional composition.
US2011233119A1 relates to a sports bottle device with filter isolated from filtered fluid and may have particular application for baby formulas. The device comprises a lower filtering bottle section for connecting to an upper bottle delivery section. However, such lower filtering bottle section is not formed as a cap for connecting to a feeding container. It is furthermore not adapted to be connected to external liquid dispensing means for being supplied with liquid by these means. In particular, the lower filtering section must be disconnected from the upper bottle section before being fed with liquid such as from a water supplying tap. Furthermore, the filter assembly is not arranged in the lower filtering section to remove contaminants from liquid supplied into the feeding container through the inlet means by the external liquid dispensing means. The filter assembly is configured to filter liquid when the liquid is transferred from the lower bottle section to the upper bottle section. As a result, the device lacks hygiene as the upper bottle section may be contaminated by the lower bottle section when the lower bottle section is connected to the upper bottle section after refilling of the lower bottle section. Furthermore, the device is not adapted to provide a good powder dissolution in liquid since the liquid is transferred from the lower bottle section to the upper bottle section by effect of pumping with the bellows provided in the lower bottle section thereby conferring potentially low energy to the liquid flow.
WO2009/092629A1 for example relates to a capsule for use in a beverage production device, the capsule containing ingredients for producing a nutritional liquid when a liquid is fed into the capsule at an inlet face thereof, the capsule being provided with an anti-microbial filter.
WO2010/128051A1 relates to a capsule for preparing a nutritional product including a filter adapted for removing contaminants wherein the filter is formed of a filter unit that comprises a filter membrane and an outlet wall for supporting the filter membrane; the outlet wall comprising at least one liquid outlet communicating with the container.
A drawback with the known capsule-based preparation devices comes from the fact that in addition to the capsules containing the infant formula base, a serving vessel for the instant formula such as a baby bottle is required. Accordingly, the required space for storage and transport of the components necessary for the preparation of the instant formula is relatively large.
Another drawback comes from the fact that the release of a reconstituted liquid composition from a capsule requires a complete dissolution or dispersion of the ingredients/formula with the diluents (e.g. ambient or warm water) to ensure a complete release of the resulting composition from the capsule to the serving bottle.
Another drawback remains the requirement for cleaning and sterilizing serving vessel that is to be carried out after each and/or before each preparation of the nutritional composition.
Therefore, a solution is sought-after which overcomes these problems.
In particular, it is desirable to enable a facilitated storage and transport of the components of the beverage preparation system. It is also desirable to reduce the number of these components and their volume in order to reduce the environmental impact of the packaging.
It is also an object to remove the need for cleaning respectively sterilization of any major component.
The present invention seeks to address the above-described problems. The invention also aims at other objects and particularly the solution of other problems as will appear in the rest of the present description.